In the feeding of multiple gobs to plural section glass forming machines, particularly the widely used I.S. or independent section type, the delivery of the gobs has in the past been through a plurality of individual funnel and deflector mechanisms. A more recent development is the use of an oscillating gob distributor in the form of a downwardly and outwardly extending chute positioned beneath the guide funnel and ahead of the troughs leading to the forming machine sections. U.S. Pat. No. Re. 28,073 to U. P. Trudeau, dated July 9, 1974 and of common assignee to the present case, illustrates a double gob distributing arrangement where a pair of deflector scoops are positioned beneath a double gob orifice feeder and the scoops or deflectors are indexed such that their delivery ends align themselves with the plural sets of troughs leading to the individual machine sections. As long as the machines are operating in satisfactory manner and there is no necessity or desire to put one of the sections out of service to either replace a mold or to adjust a machine which is producing a defective container, the machine will operate satisfactorily. However, when it becomes desirable to take a section out of operation, it is necessary to deflect the gobs before they drop into the chutes, or into the scoops, away from the troughs, or in some way provide a way of intercepting the gobs prior to their arrival at the individual machine section. On occasion, it is also desirable to shut down the entire machine and all of its sections, at which time all of the gobs will necessarily be sent to a cullet accumulating area normally found in the basement of the factory.
A system for providing rejection of gobs as they are being fed to the upper end of an oscillating scoop is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,594,146, issued July 20, 1971. In this patent, there is shown a vertical funnel positioned beneath the feeder orifice, and the funnel is mounted such that it may be oscillated to throw a gob out of the vertical path of travel through the funnel by oscillation of the funnel. The system is such that it may be programmed to operate on a particular section and to deflect gobs destined for that section away from the distributor. Furthermore, there is shown an arrangement where all of the gobs to the full machine may be intercepted by the movement of a cullet chute into the area between the lower end of the funnel and the upper end of the distributor scoop. In this situation, it is perhaps better that the guide funnel itself be shifted out of the path permitting the gob of molten glass to fall directly into the positioned cullet chute, preserving the integrity of the funnel and avoiding excessive wear thereof.